Hell With the Lid Blown Off: An Alafair Tucker Mystery by Donis Casey
Poisoned Pen Press (June 2014)
ISBN: 978-1464202988
I had no idea that this book was the seventh in a series when I read it. You don’t have to have read the previous stories to understand and appreciate it. I enjoyed it very much and will definitely be looking at the rest of this series.
The setting is Oklahoma in 1916. I felt the locations and the attitudes of the people were extremely accurate for that time period. Ms. Casey has done her homework, right down to the recipes used in the book.
Tornadoes were and are a real threat in this part of the country. Reading about the destruction caused by one of these scary storms was not fun, but necessary for the plot. The Tucker family and their neighbors help each other recover and discover that one death was not related to the storm.
The large cast of characters were well drawn and interesting. Alafair Tucker didn’t seem to play one of the main roles until most of the way through the book, but that wasn’t central to the book. Although the story moves along as a historical novel for quite a while, it does have a compelling mystery. Many of the characters had reason to murder the victim, but as they say, preception is everything.
The book was edited well and the pace is steady. This is character-driven intead of an action tale, but I never lost interest. I recommend it for the historical aspects as well as the story of a tight-knit family and community.
I received a book from the publisher in return for my fair assessment.